BATON ROUGE - In surprising testimony, the head of the Governor's Office of Elderly Affairs denounced administration plans to move her agency under the auspices of the Department of Health and Hospitals at a budget hearing Tuesday afternoon. Martha Manuel, the office's executive director, told the House Appropriations Committee the move will lead to budget cuts and increased inefficiency in providing services to senior citizens.

"At no time did I have input on this move," said Manuel, who Jindal appointed to head the office in Feb. 2011.

Manuel's criticism was prompted by Rep. James Armes, D-Leesville, who asked why the administration would tinker with a program that appeared to be serving residents. While this year's budget proposal calls for all of the $45.3 million assigned to the Office of Elderly Affairs to be transferred to DHH, Armes said there was no guarantee that the office's funding would not be cut in the future.

With year-after-year budget cuts that mainly impact DHH and the state's higher education system, the two largest areas of discretionary funding, Armes said, "I can pretty much tell you, our senior citizens are going to get cut."

"Yes sir, you're right," Manuel said.

But DHH Deputy Secretary Kathy Kliebert noted that programs that are part of the governor's office, where Elderly Affairs is currently housed, are no safer from budget cuts than those in the health agency.

"As we look at the budget cuts we are not cutting services to seniors," she said.

Administration officials have said transferring Elderly Affairs, which handles programs for independent senior citizens, to DHH, which handles other services for the elderly, would allow the state to tap into additional funds for senior citizens and provide increased services in the future.

"We've got a growing demand for senior services and we believe that DHH can offer some opportunities for leveraging funds as well as infrastructure for increasing services for seniors in the future," Kliebert said.

Kliebert was discussing the proposed move at a forum with residents in Lake Charles during Manuel's testimony and said the executive director's comments came as a surprise.

The administration's plans have come under fire from local Councils on Aging, which the office oversees, from the first day the budget was announced. So many representatives of those groups showed up at the official unveiling of the governor's budget last month that additional meeting rooms had to be opened to contain the overflow.

During her testimony, Manuel questioned whether the proposed move would have the positive impacts predicted by the administration. She said that additional federal dollars anticipated by the administration might not be directed back to Councils on Aging, noted that DHH's programs and those of Elderly Affairs serve different populations and said the bureaucracy of DHH would make it more difficult to obtain services.

"If anybody has ever had to access DHH, you will know they are not as easy to get to as the Office of Elderly Affairs," Manuel said. "There's no comparison. When I get you the figures you'll see. We're providing three times the services Adult Protective Services is providing at nearly half the cost because we don't have the levels of bureaucracy."

But Kliebert noted that DHH has added services to 5,000 people over the last two years despite budget cuts in the department and contested the idea that the department was difficult to work with. Local Councils on Aging would remain in place with the same degree of local autonomy after the transfer and DHH has local offices that would be able to help with any problems, she said.

It is relatively rare for political appointees to criticize policies proposed by their own administration, a fact that Manuel did not ignore.

"I probably won't be here during the next time you meet," she told the committee.

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Jeff Adelson can be reached at jadelson@timespicayune.com or 225.342.5207.